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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Reconstructed: Burnt City Woman

The reconstructed version of the 5,000-year-old skeleton was unveiled during a ceremony attended by head of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization Hamid Baqaei and Iran's ambassador to Italy Seyyed Mohammad-Ali Hosseini.

The woman, whose face has been reconstructed by a group of Iranian and Italian researchers, is famous for carrying the first prosthesis to have been used by man, ISNA reported.

This is a great scientific achievement which shows that Persians used innovative medical equipment 5,000 years ago, Baqaei said during the opening ceremony of the exhibition.

The unique discovery was the result of excavations in the Burnt City in 2006, when archaeologists found an artificial eyeball on a 1.82-meter- tall female skeleton, much taller than ordinary women of her time, and dated back to between 2900 and 2800 BCE.